The No. 2-seeded Mayfield girls basketball team wasn't wildly successful while imposing its full-court pressure defense, at least not during the first half. The thing is, the Trojans didn't need to be when facing seventh-seeded Eldorado in their Class 5A State Basketball Championships quarterfinals matchup. As is the case with every press, it's about accumulated fatigue on the opposition.

In short, the Trojans grounded the Eagles en route to a 59-40 win Tuesday at the Santa Ana Star Center. They advanced to Thursday's semifinals in The Santa Ana Star Center, where they'll face No. 6-ranked Volcano Vista, a 51-46 winner over Cibola. Volcano Vista is the defending Class 5A state champion.

Eldorado (18-11) particularly flat-lined in the third quarter, enabling Mayfield to build a 10-point lead that eventually swelled to 20 in the final frame.

The Eagles, ham-fisted and hurried, rarely navigated the ball past the timeline in the second half.

Mayfield's migration in strategy proved the difference. The Trojans mixed in a half-court trap to compensate for the Eagles' speed, which helped them stake a 26-25 first-half lead. It worked, as Eldorado finished with 14 second-half shot attempts to 19 turnovers, a stark shift from their more reasonable first-half totals.

"We're going to pressure you for 32 minutes and see if you can weather the storm," Trojans head coach George Maya said. "That's really our main goal - to trap and press and get little runs.

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The biggest little run came midway through the third quarter, right after Eldorado's Gabby Pacheco's jumper from the far corner knotted the contest at 30 apiece. The Trojans ripped off a 10-0 run, started by Melissa Lucero's straight-away 3-pointer with 3:06 left and capped by Daeshi McCants' three-point play.

McCants kissed a left-handed banker off the glass and got the foul. Sandwiched in between for the Eagles was a deflating, rapid-fire flurry of turnovers and uncontested layups.

Even more sobering was Annelies Trujillo's circus shot midway through Mayfield's spurt. She got bumped in the lane and threw up an off-balanced shot that skimmed the top of the backboard and somehow dropped straight through the net.

Eldorado had to contend with the weight of the Trojans' pressure amid the absence of 6-foot-1-inch senior center Kerstin Strong, who picked up her fourth foul with just under five minutes to go in the third. She didn't re-enter the game for nearly eight minutes.

Eldorado head coach Mike Huston said it was too much for the Eagles to overcome.

"That just killed our team," Huston said. "Teams press to take away your heart and soul. We turn around and we're down. That's when it's disheartening because now you turn around and gotta get the ball up again. Then they're shooting free throws, and the next thing you know, you're down by 12 or 15. It's that domino effect."

So much so that the Eagles' desperation was palpable on the floor.

"I could feel they were getting frustrated," said McCants, who finished with 17 points, four assists and six steals.

McCants got going early, which was good for Mayfield, whose success is directly tied to its junior forward. What's better was having a healthy Audrey Oliver. The point guard, one of three Trojans in double figures, finished with 10 points, most coming from the free-free throw line, where the Trojans were 24-of-35. Eldorado, by comparison, attempted only 13.

Oliver nursed a slight bone fracture in her shooting hand in the two teams' last meeting, a 47-45 win in Albuquerque on Jan. 19. It forced her to miss two games. On Tuesday, she wasn't hampered by it.

Subsequently, neither were the Trojans.

"She just creates a lot of havoc," Maya said. "Having her healthy is really (indispensable)."